After five years of trying for a baby, Julie Cummings was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen.

She had taken fertility drugs for two years, to no avail. Eventually, she and her husband David decided to resort to IVF.

But weeks before the treatment was due to begin, Mrs Cummings became pregnant – after giving up bread.

Julie Cummings was told IVF was her only chance of conceiving a child following five years of trying with no success

The result was the couple’s daughter Maisie, now two, who was born two weeks late in January 2011 after a healthy pregnancy.

Mrs Cummings, a 37-year-old engineer, stopped eating foods containing high levels of yeast on the advice of a nutritionist, who she went to see because she wanted to adopt a healthier lifestyle before starting IVF.

She explained: ‘I cut out potatoes, bread, garlic bread, toast from my diet, and mainly ate just vegetables and fruit. I also took some health supplements.

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‘Two months later – that was the only change I had made for five and a half years – and I was pregnant.

‘Now we are just very happy, especially after everything we went through, that Maisie’s come into our life.’

She and David, 50, met in Germany in 2004, when they were both in the military, and started trying for a baby a year later.

After nine months with no luck, Mrs Cummings went to see an army medic and was eventually diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, which stops eggs being released.

Mrs Cummings, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, said: ‘They said I’d need extra help to get pregnant and that it wouldn’t go away on its own.

‘They recommended I go to a fertility clinic in Hertfordshire, where I started on a course of treatment.’

Julie was pregnant with her daughter Maisie within two months and she was born in 2011 after a healthy pregnancy

Mrs Cummings took clomid, a fertility drug used to help re-balance the body’s hormones to increase the chance of ovulation, for more than two years – without success.

Doctors told her the next step would be IVF. But when she visited Caroline Sproule, a nutrition and fertility consultant at Bromsgrove Allergy and Nutrition Centre, she was told she was suffering from an infection caused by an overgrowth of a fungus called Candida albicans.

This is encouraged by eating foods that contain yeast, such as bread. One of its side effects is menstrual problems, including the stopping of periods altogether, which in turn prevents pregnancy.

In March 2010, Mrs Cummings had her first period in six months and by April the same year she was pregnant.

She added: ‘I didn’t really go to the centre to get pregnant, just to stand me in good stead for IVF but thankfully we didn’t have to go down that route.

‘It just shows what years of abuse – drinking too much and eating the wrong things – can do to your body.’